Tunes to give you some ‘gym-spiration’

For all the gym-spiration you need, check out the ultimate workout playlist featuring tracks from some of our local health and fitness experts (and me).
Pull yourself a playlist on Spotify or Youtube and get motivated with this selection of beats and bass:

I’M frequently harping on about rising vinyl sales and it seems the trend has not slowed just yet!

Figures released last week have shown that UK vinyl sales reached a high of 3.2million in 2016 – a massive increase of 53 per-cent from the previous year.
Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ (pictured) was the most popular vinyl release of last year, selling more than double the number of copies of 2015’s biggest-seller, Adele’s ’25’.
Amy Winehouse has the second best selling release of 2016 with her final album ‘Back To Black’, while the ‘mixtape’ soundtrack for the movie Guardians Of The Galaxy came in third and Radiohead’s acclaimed, Mercury-nominated ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ was at No.4.

The rest of the top ten was filled with ‘classic’ and legacy albums from the likes of Fleetwood Mac, The Stone Roses, The Beatles, Nirvana and Prince. However, vinyl only accounts for 2.6-per-cent of overall music sales, with CDs and download sales dropping rapidly. CD sales dropped by 11.7-per-cent and downloads fell by 29.6-per-cent.

Throughout 2016 I suggested some new artists and music to check out, over the next couple of weeks I will recap on a few of the breakthrough artists featured with a suggested track or two from each:

Jamie N Commons
Featured in August: London based singer songwriter who you will most likely recently recognise from the BBC’s coverage of the Rio Olympics with track ‘Not Gonna Break Me’ providing the soundtrack as well as Jay Z’s monster hit ‘Jungle’.Suggested tracks: Not Gonna Break Me, The Preacher.

Glass Animals
Featured in June: English indie rock band from Oxford. They released their debut album Zaba in June 2014 which brought the band over 53 million streams on Spotify in 2015.Suggested tracks:Life Itself, Youth.

Father John Misty
Featured in June: An American singer, songwriter, guitarist and drummer. Under the ‘Genre’ part of his Facebook Bio it states ‘Post-modern Self-reflexive Semi-Ironic Renunciation of Originality’, clear as mud eh? Id describe him as modern indie folk.Suggested tracks:Real Love Baby, I Love You Honeybear.

Tor Miller
Featured in May: singer-songwriter from New York with a vintage raspy style and strong, romantic, songs which earned him a number of ‘one to watch’ accolades.Suggested tracks:Surrender, Midnight.

Gallant
Featured in June: American singer-songwriter I’d label as ‘Luxury pop soul’ – one of my favourite albums of last year!
A rising alt-R&B singer-songwriter who began recording songs in school as a teenager.Suggested tracks:Weight in Gold, Bourbon.

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